The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Generally, multi-corner and multi-mode (MCMM) timing closure is a challenging task for high performance IC designs because the timing margins shift from one process corner to another process corner. As a result, an optimal implementation for one process corner can fail to meet the timing requirements or the timing targets at another process corner. It normally takes numerous iterations to eventually make the design meeting one essential timing criterion, such as a hold time across process corners, by compromise of another timing criterion, such as a setup time margin, for example. Therefore, the design cycle is prolonged, and the original speed and power targets are often missed when the timing is closed.